No sane person can dispute the incredible craftsmanship of 1933’s King Kong … just as no sane person can hold its sequel, The Son of Kong, at any point near that level.

Directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack (later to helm the 1949 Kong imitator Mighty Joe Young, this brief, lame, poorly acted follow-up seems incredibly rushed, which may explain the sheer amount of padding in the front half. The flimsy story has Denham (Robert Armstrong, 1932’s The Most Dangerous Game), now penniless due to that whole Empire State Building fiasco, being suckered in to a return expedition to Kong Island. Along the way, he picks up a banjo-strummin’ carnival hussy (Helen Mack, 1935’s She), who is a poor substitute for Fay Wray.

As soon as they set foot on the island, the crew comes across some ooga-booga natives, a giant bear, a couple of dinosaurs and ultimately a hungry sea serpent. Oh, and of course, Son of Kong, whose white fur makes him look like the first cousin of the Abominable Snowman in that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer cartoon. He’s well-animated, but needlessly comical.

This Kong is friendly from the get-go, posing no threat to the humans, but the stereotypical Chinese cook — in fact, that’s the character’s name: Chinese cook! — carries a kitchen machete just in case. Lil’ Kong protects the gang and shows them some treasure before drowning in a flood. Ain’t life a bitch? —Rod Lott

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Part three of The Fly saga, The Curse of the Fly is miles away in tone and subject matter from the beloved 1958 original and its low-rent sequel the following year, but highly effective in its sober, British quality. Imagine the stiff-upper-lip style of any given Avengers episode (I’m talking Emma Peel, not Iron Man) done scientific and straight-faced, and you have this rather cool, compelling sci-fi gem, as underrated as it is underseen.

As the black-and-white film begins, we’re treated to slow-motion shots of a comely brunette (Carole Gray, Devils of Darkness) escaping from a loony bin while wearing only her bra and panties. On the run, she comes across Henri Delambre (Brian Donlevy, 1947’s Kiss of Death), one of those dapper young men of the family whose ancestors pioneered experimentation in human teleportation — a project he himself is involved heavily in perfecting.

I say “perfecting,” because all the kinks of disintegration and reintegration of the human body’s molecules aren’t all worked out. And damned if the Delambres don’t have a mess of caged mutants out back to prove it! Included in the menagerie is Henri’s ex-wife, who — although now scaly-faced — still plays a mean piano!

These unethical laboratory shenanigans lead to a mutant revolt and a perverse, genuinely disturbing twist I won’t reveal. I found Curse to be an incredibly unique take on the Fly concept as created in George Langelaan’s 1957 short story; uncommon for the B-programmer era, director Don Sharp (Psychomania) found a way to expand on the source material’s mythology without just doing a simple rehash, although the studio — and especially tightwad producer Robert L. Lippert (The Last Man on Earth) — gladly would have settled for that. It would have been interesting to see where the franchise went from here, but 20th Century Fox gave it up until David Cronenberg’s brilliant reinvention in 1986. —Rod Lott

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Imagine Alien. Now imagine Alien if the creature were designed not by H.R. Giger, but In-N-Out Burger. That’s Spaceship Terror. No one claims it is good for you, but if you’re in the mood for it, damn, does it hit the spot! (And it’s just as messy — maybe it should have been titled Star Gores.)

Written, directed, produced, edited and everythinged by rookie filmmaker Harry Tchinski, Spaceship Terror opens with half a dozen peeps going on a trip in what will be their least favorite rocket ship, because the craft crashes on a nearby desolate planet. Seeking medical attention for the injured lone male, the ladies come upon a large vessel whose moniker is stenciled in capital red letters. Asks one of the women rhetorically, “Who’d name their spaceship Terror?”

Answer: Capt. Terror (Jay Wesley Cochran, The Catechism Cataclysm), an obese psychopath with a tube up his nose, a retractable harpoon gun in his hands and a pink-pantied Asian girl (Emma Lee Nguyen, Teenage Kung Fu Cottontails) trapped in his lair for the last two years. She fills in the new arrivals: “You’re on a death ship! You’re all going to die!”

Elaborating after that fine “how do you do,” she explains that Capt. Terror likes to play hide-and-seek for keeps, with his guests forced to trudge winding, booby-trapped hallways while being pursued by him, his itchy trigger finger and/or his rapey other parts. However, Cap plays fair, giving a count-of-50 head start and, per each death, another piece of the code needed to unlock Terror’s escape pod. With such a twisted game, Capt. Terror is not unlike Saw’s villainous Jigsaw, minus the moral compass, Ivy League diction and the ability to turn down Winchell’s crullers.

Spaceship Terror knows exactly who it wants its audience to be and caters accordingly. (Capt. Terror must be right in sync, cranking the ship’s heat to 120˚ F so the ladies have to strip to sweat-damp skivvies.) With outrageous gore sequences that seek to disgust as they delight — the double de-ankling, the mammary trauma, et al. — the no-budget epic is not for the easily offended. Perhaps I’m the only sick bastard to detect a touch of black comedy in the proceedings, but the flick makes no apologies for the grindhouse cesspool in which it wades.

The acting would leave something to be desired, if performances were a concern. They are not; vehicles like Spaceship Terror are about creative kills, and Capt. Terror, an imposing figure who would be right at home in a Rob Zombie film, delivers. With excellent makeup effects (CGI effects, much less so) and nasty fun, the outer-space slasher is a scrappy work Tchinski can be proud of — not possessive-name-above-the-title proud, but proud nonetheless. (It’s a little early to brand oneself à la John Carpenter.) If Tchinski bows at the big-box VHS heyday as I suspect, further travels of Capt. Terror in the near and exploitable future would not be out of the question. —Rod Lott

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Avengers, assemble! For the inevitable, super-sized sequel, of course: Avengers: Age of Ultron. The 2012 original, Marvel’s The Avengers, burst into the world box office’s rarified billion-dollar club, so what one critic in Bumfuck, Flyover State, thinks about this follow-up matters not at all.

That said, in case you’re curious, I found Age of Ultron to be more satisfying than its big brother. Much more.

Like Iron Man 3, however, footing is found only after the shakiest of starts. Here, it’s a real show-off sequence of all six of Earth’s mightiest heroes fending off enemy soldiers. Although made to look like an unbroken tracking shot, it’s so obviously and overly computer-generated that it appears like a cartoon. Downshifting to slow motion to draw even more attention to itself, one angle in particular all but reaches from the screen to give fanboys a quick, collective wank (à la See You Next Wednesday’s “Feel-Around” experience).

Subsequent skirmishes — and Age of Ultron has many — are staged better. The screenplay, by returning director Joss Whedon, threatens our Avengers team from within after Iron Man alter ego Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr. in his sixth go-round with the character) covertly completes Ultron, an artificial-intelligence project intended for global defense. However, the AI (voiced by James Spader of TV’s The Blacklist at his most Spadery, which is to say terrific) decides, as it boots to life, that it doesn’t like what it’s been programmed to do, so it zigs instead of zags, thereby aiming to annihilate mankind. Even in a movie predicated upon our suspended disbelief in green giants and thunder gods and unfrozen American army men, Ultron’s insufficiently explained 180 is a completely stupid plot-starter. To call it otherwise is to deny the elephant in the room, even after the stench of pachyderm poo has grown overwhelming.

Forgive — but do not forget, because it’s poor and lazy writing, period — and let the sci-fi spectacle act its Age, because Whedon was able to right some of the predecessor’s wrongs. This sophomore outing sports a livelier, more interesting villain and better utilizes each major player without having the superhero soufflé feel overstuffed. That in itself is a Hulk-sized accomplishment, given that rather than trim the roster, Whedon expanded it to include many more. He’s roped in do-gooders from connected Marvel movies and added a few newcomers, notably Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, evil twins played by 2014’s Godzilla couple Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Of the original teammates, Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) benefit most from the widened scope.

This Avengers adventure still has troubles — too many quips, too many in-joke nudges, too much Cobie Smulders — yet achieves what the first film could not for me: engagement and excitement. —Rod Lott

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In 1442, by order of the sultan, the Turkish army enslaved and conscripted 1,000 boys from Transylvania. (Why all the underage soldiers? That’s nobody’s business but the Turks’.) Out of that group, the prologue of Dracula Untold tells, one emerged as a “warrior so fierce”: Vlad the Impaler, not yet known as Dracula, not yet a vampire.

In fact, returning to Transylvania as a prince of peace, Vlad (Luke Evans, Fast & Furious 6) is a family man with a wife (Sarah Gadon, Antiviral) and towheaded tot (Art Parkinson, TV’s Game of Thrones). That sweet life comes under threat when Turkish warlord Mehmed (Dominic Cooper, Captain America: The Winter Soldier) comes calling to revive that old “recruitment” process of 1,000 boys, Vlad’s included.

What’s a dad like Vlad to? Kick Mehmet’s ass. How? By climbing Broken Tooth Mountain, atop which a vampire (an eerie Charles Dance, Alien 3) lives, ready to imbue Vlad with a shortlist of superpowers:
1. the strength of 100 men,
2. the speed of a falling star,
3. dominion o’er the night and all its creatures,
4. and good ol’ immortality.

The downside? Just an unquenchable thirst for human blood. Vlad decides to submit to vampirism anyway. Oh, shit, sorry: Spoiler alert.

With his deep-red cape and symmetrical-patterned coat of armor, Vlad 2.0 looks and acts very much like a comic-book hero; ergo, Dracula Untold is his origin story — his birth on Krypton, his bite from a radioactive spider. Here, Vlad is rendered the original “bat man,” morphing his body into a belfry’s worth of bats to leap from one point to another in a fraction of the time. This provides him an upper hand on the battlefield, and us with an admittedly cool effect, surpassed only by an ashes-ashes-all-fall-down finale. Having infected blood proves so advantageous in war that Vlad passes it out to his fellow fighters like frat boys discovering Red Bull (“It’s got wings, bro! Wings!”).

Freshman director Gary Shore does an admirable job of shoehorning plenty of atmosphere into what is first and foremost an FX extravaganza. More commendable, newbie screenwriters Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless bring a comparatively fresh take on Bram Stoker’s oft-filmed creation. Dracula Untold truly is unlike any other Dracula movie before it because it could get away with dropping the famous name altogether — but what would be the marquee value in that?

With almost all trappings of horror scraped away, the film is an action-laden, sword-slinging fantasy: a fanged 300. It’s also Universal Pictures’ initial step in rebooting its classic monsters for a shared-universe franchise to follow the mighty Marvel template of moneymaking moviemaking. While not so good as to be great — Evans’ flowing locks are more noticeable than his performance — it’s a solid start. —Rod Lott

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